Ghosted
by Shibalyfe
Summary: How the Bloody Baron earned his name. This was written for The Houses Competition: Y5R6


House/Team: Gryffindor

Class Subject: Care of Magical Creatures

Story Category: Standard

Prompt: [Event] Waking up as a ghost

Beta: Tiggs

Word Count: 1556

A/N: Warning: Violence/Blood/Deaths. This story was written for The Houses Competition, Y5R6.

* * *

The darkness seemed to press in on him and made him hyper aware of the quiet surrounding him. He could hear the wind whistling against the side of the dwelling, the branches from the trees swishing and crackling against each other. He could hear the rustling of animals as they scurried across the pathways and through the trees as they tried to hunt in the night. There was a gentle owl hooting in the distance and the gentle murmur of a stream nearby.

William scrunched his eyes tighter and tried to block out the sounds of the night around him and fall back asleep. He normally enjoyed silence but tonight it felt jarring and unnatural. He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand and the warning signs of electricity shoot down his spine.

He felt numb and cold, which was usually a sign of a good night of drinking but it was unaccompanied by the normal pounding in his head. It must have been a good night, though, because he did not remember going to sleep. Come to think of it, he could not remember much of the night before at all.

His eyes flew open at the realization; where was he? He blinked his eyes a few times trying to clear the fuzziness from his eyesight so he could take in the sights around him, but all he could see was darkness and blurry shapes that surrounded him. He got to his feet and instantly felt lightheaded. He flared his arms around him but didn't come in contact with any hard surfaces in which to steady himself.

The room was spinning around him, dizzying him. He fumbled forward, trying to find something to hold onto, something to ground him. The shadows in the room seemed to be growing, eating away at the tiny sliver of light splayed across the room from the moon. He stumbled towards it, trying to grasp on to the one thing that he could see. The room spun faster and he held his head in his hands trying to block everything out.

He ran towards the window, now urgently needing something, anything, to help the darkness fade away and illuminate the shadows. Something to help him see where he was.

The alarm bells in his head were blaring now and once he reached the window, he stuck his head out and gulped at the fresh air. The air was chilly but it calmed the chaos in his head. The spinning died down and the noises around him seemed to stop entirely. He looked down and his skin was pale and illuminated; he almost looked translucent in the moonlight. It gave his skin a blue gray tint that fascinated him.

He pulled his eyes away from this sight of his own hands and turned back to the room, seeing clearly for the first time since waking, and his heart dropped. He had expected bottles and mugs to be lining the floor, evidence from the good times the night before scattered across the room—he did not expect the pools of dark, red blood on the floor, or the splattering of crimson on the walls.

He turned in horror and gasped at the display around him. He was not considered a kind man; he was a true Slytherin to his core, cunning, manipulative, and ambitious. He would kill any man that got in his way, without hesitation, but he wasn't considered a cruel man. He would kill someone without a second thought but he wouldn't make them suffer through it. It would be quick, easy, and relatively painless, but the amount of blood that surrounded him now did not look quick, easy, or painless.

His eyes slowly trailed across the room, trying to make sense of the scene before him. He followed the pathway of blood to a large lump on the ground: a body. His eyes slowly took in the shape of heeled shoes and the ruffles of skirts. He could feel the warning bells begin to go off again in his mind and rushed towards the body. The brown hair was a matted mess and covered the face of the woman lying face down on the ground, but he would recognize those auburn tresses anywhere.

"Helena!" he called out, rushing towards her.

He looked around the room, desperately unable to accept the fate of his beloved. While looking for something, _anything, _that could save her, his eyes landed on another body. 'Good,' he thought to himself, 'at least he had killed the culprit.' The massive amounts of blood began to make sense; it was fitting that he would take his revenge on whoever had committed this treacherous act.

His eyes began to search around the room again until his eyes noticed the shimmer of a buckle on the deceased's shoes.

In a trance, he left Helena behind him and walked towards the other unknown body. His eyes recognized the body before his mind could catch up. He saw his own lifeless eyes staring back at him, his own body covered in his one true love's blood, and suddenly the memories of the night before came back to him in a rush.

_"I don't want to go back with you, Baron," she had shouted at him. "I am going to make something of myself, become even better than my mother. I can't do that if I am tied to you and stuck in Scotland. What knowledge could I possibly acquire there?"_

_"But Helena, I love you. We could get married and travel the world together, looking for the fountain of truths you seek. I could help you acquire the knowledge you seek and protect you." _

_She scoffed. "Love isn't real, Baron. The only truth in those words is that the perceived feeling of love makes those under its spell do silly things. I will not marry you and I will not subjugate myself to that stupidity." _

_William stared at her, blood rushing to his cheeks. "You do not love me, or are you scared to love me?" _

_She shook her head haughtily. "What aren't you comprehending, Baron? I do not love you. I could never love you!" She laughed. "What a silly notion." _

William remembered how the rage had coursed through his body, like a river flowing through his limbs, straight from his broken heart. He remembered the feeling of the knife in his hand and the tension leave his body the moment the knife pierced her skin, how much lighter he had felt with each stab. He remembered how horrified he had been when he finally came to. The desperation he had felt when he turned the knife on himself to be with her one final time.

He looked at his own body lying lifeless on the ground and back at the hands he held out in front of him, and suddenly all the oddities began to make sense: the blue-tinged skin, his translucency, his inability to steady himself on something, and the lightness he felt. He was a ghost.

He looked around the room once more and quickly walked out the door, unsure of what he would do now or where he should go.

Standing in the pale moonlight on the pathway facing the little cabin in the woods was Helena. The glow gave her a more angelic appearance, instead of an erie one.

She didn't turn to him when he approached, but instead, chose to talk to one of the thousands of trees that surrounded them.

"You have ruined me, absolutely ruined me and everything that I have worked towards. I will be nothing now, remembered for nothing more than how I died and who I am related to." She turned further away from him.

Her voice was shrill and filled with regret. He knew that if she were still alive, tears would be glimmering down her cheeks. He stepped forward but she moved even further away, distancing herself from him.

"I will never forgive you for this." Her voice turned to ice. "I will never speak to you again."

"My love, please forgive me. You said it yourself, love makes one do stupid things. I will do anything you ask of me. I promise, I will make it up to you. I will follow you to the ends of the Earth and make this up to you."

"Don't. If you will do anything for me, then promise me that you won't ever talk to me again and just leave me be."

He looked at the moon and a pained expression marred his face. "I can't do that. I can't leave you alone. I won't talk to you ever again, if that is your wish, but I can't leave you alone and I refuse to."

She gave a sad sigh, nodded solemnly, and began to walk away. Her feet didn't crunch any leaves or leave a trail on the ground, but William would follow her anyway. And he did, always from a distance, hoping that eternity would change her mind and she would eventually love him as much as he loved her.


End file.
